DrBloodmoney's Super Scientific Ranking of Games!

[HelixNebula_x]

Looking forward to reading your thoughts on Chained Echoes, it's been on my wishlist for a while.

[DrBloodmoney]

Just now, HelixNebula_x said:

Looking forward to reading your thoughts on Chained Echoes, it's been on my wishlist for a while.

 

Well.... if you put any kind of stock in my opinions, I imagine I'll be helping to reduce the size of your Wishlist by 1....

[Steven-Spiegel]

Let's see how well Laika is doing, I loved that game even with his issues.

[DrBloodmoney]

 

  NEW SCIENTIFIC RESULTS ARE IN! 

 

 

Hello Science-Earnests and Science-Vanessas, as promised (and in some no cases requested), here are the latest results of our great scientific endeavour!

 

 

 

Laika: Aged Through Blood

 

Summary: 

 

A stylish, 2023-released, hand-animated-looking metroidvania from Brainwash Gang, Laika: Aged Through Blood combines 2D, Trials-style bike controls with Hotline Miami/ My Friend Pedro-style combat to tell a bleak, dark tale of loss and suffering in a post-apocalyptic, Max Max-esque world.

 

The player takes on the role of the eponymous Laika, an anthropomorphised coyote mother from a family blighted by a curious curse - the females are immortal, cursed to revive whenever they are killed, and able to commune with the recently dead. 
Each woman in the family inherits this curse from their mother upon their first "bleed" (puberty,) and carry it until such time as their own daughter inherits it at their first bleed.

The curse is a benefit to the tribe the family belong to - in this bleak, uncaring world, in which the coyotes and other animals are oppressed by the bird population, (who declared themselves the "master race" centuries prior, and rule like an army,) the presence of Laika and her matriarchal lineage has been all that has allowed the loose collective of mammals to hold out their meagre existence against the birds - but is a bleak existence for the females of the family themselves, as the burdens of protection and the weariness of endless suffering crush and embitter them.

 

After discovering, at the game's outset, that the birds have tortured and crucified one of her daughter, Puppy,'s young friends, and that the child's father has stolen her revolver to seek revenge, Laika attempts to find him and pull him back from this suicide mission. 
While doing so, she discovers both that the child's remains have been taken, and that the birds are experimenting with new weaponry - weaponry that would solidify their stranglehold on the wastelands, and likely end her tribe's existence once and for all. 

What begins as a quest to recover the remains of the ill-fated child for proper burial, turns into a fight for the very existence of her tribe, as Laika seeks to cut the heart out of the fascist bird autocracy...
...all the while dealing with her own strained relationship with her mother, her split loyalties between wanting to shield her daughter and prepare her for her future, the needs of the makeshift community...
...and the ticking clock of her daughter's impending first bleed, that would herald the end of her tenure as protector.

Narratively, Laika is very good...
...and incredibly grim and bleak, almost to point of oppression.

 

The lore of the world, the immediate story of the lost child, and the emergent narrative of Laika's fight against the oppressive and fascist birds is, of course, somewhat detached, given that it all revolves around animated, anthropomorphic animals, but make no mistake - the primary reason this appears to be the case, is that by doing so, it allows the developer leeway to set a tone so dark, cruel, grim and hostile, that telling it using humans would simply be too much for the average player to stomach. The detachment that comes from the anthropomorphic animals used in place of humans allows the player to one-remove themselves a little, (in much the same way that the also very dark and grim Backbone did,) but here, unlike Backbone, I literally do think the story simply would not be palatable otherwise.
There are vivid descriptions of extreme torture, elements diving into hopeless depression and suicide, and elements of harsh brutality that are unusual in their level of implied violence - even within the videogame genre... 
...and that is saying something!

 

That almost seems like it should be a refrain - but the fact is, by going so extreme in the story tone, Laika actually manages to do something pretty interesting - it manages to feel far more original and interesting than one might think it should, considering the actual setting - post war, post-apocalyptic wasteland - is hardly a new ground for games. 

The narrative is genuinely good, but also genuinely quite unusual, simply because it is approaching the genre with "no holds barred". Nothing is off the table, so the story is able to go to new places that other games simply wouldn't want to.

To use an analogy to television, take the TV show Shameless. That show is essentially a family soap opera - a genre as old as the television format itself - but it consistently found original avenues of story and character development that hadn't been seen much before, simply because it was willing to use narrative elements and catalysts most other shows would baulk at. IT was willing to make it's characters do despicable things, that most shows wouldn't, for fear of alienating the audience... and by doing so, felt fresher and more original than the premise seemed like it would allow. 

 

The tone in Laika is great, and the individual beats of the narrative are well implemented. 
Dialogue is purely text - there is no voice work in the game, aside from vocals in the score (more on that later), but the writing, while highly stylised, is done well. The tone is that of a genre noir, and it works nicely, with different characters feeling well drawn and distinct, and their particular eccentricities and personalities on show. The tone is unendingly sad and grim - even to the point that "comedy relief" characters tend to make you first smile of laugh, then feel sad for them, as the crazy behaviour that IS comical, is clearly a sign of madness, brought on by their awful situation...
...but it works. 
The player has to be in for that kind of tone, for sure - not everyone is - but if they are, Laika offers a good version of it.

Gameplay is the primary factor in a metroidvania, of course, and here, it is also pretty damned great.

Laika moves around the wasteland on her dirt-bike, and the whole world is designed with that in mind, with virtually every element of the environments designed with ramps, tubes and tricky rails as the basis.  The game uses a very Trials / Joe Danger style of bike control, with the player controlling Laika's weight on the bike, and therefore flipping and spinning the bike forwards and backwards to gain or loose momentum in jumps. 
In fact, the traversal elements are fed directly into the other major element of the gameplay - the combat - quite neatly, as Laika's method for reloading her guns is to do an in-air backflip, and her method of recharging her "bullet-reflect" ability is to do an in-air forward flip. 
This means that the combat (which is extremely deadly and quick,) has a sort of "dance" involved - each encounter is something of both a combat and a traversal puzzle in one, where the player must evaluate each encounter, and establish the best pattern. 
"Jump off that ramp, then flip to block a bullet, then shoot two guys, then compete the flip to recharge, then land, then jump here, then shoot here, then reflect, then flip this way.... etc etc etc."

 

These encounters are very fast - and like in Hotline Miami, all enemies, and Laika herself, die in one hit - so can feel very frenetic...
... however, the ability to slow down time while aiming gives them a neat edge, and allows long combat encounters to be mixed with traversal in much the way My Friend Pedro.
In the case of Laika: Aged Through Blood though, it is done  to a much more crisp, clean, snappy and satisfying way than My Friend Pedro game was ever able to muster, as that game's primary issue was how "floaty" and disconnected the physics felt from the environments. In Laika: Aged Through Blood, the physics model is harsh but fair, and feels very intuitive and fitting to the environments being traversed.

This blending of Trials-style traversal and bike tricks, with an exploratory metroidvania actually put me in mind of another game - Yoku's Island Express. 
The two are, of course, wildly different in tone (indeed, I'm not sure it would be possible for two games to be more different in that sense!,) however, what Yoku's Island Express did - very successfully - was blend the traditional metroidvania with a traversal mechanic that existed before in other genres (in that case, Pinball,) and therefore feel wholly original.
Laika does the same thing, but rather than Pinball, the import is the Trials-bike controls, and the My Friend Pedro combat.

The gameplay works essentially on a mission structure - with "main" quests and side quests all pooling into a single, "to-do" task list, and what is curious about the game is how simple the actual requirements of these missions are. Virtually every mission - most main ones, and virtually all side ones - are simply "go to this location, find X, and return" - which should be incredibly dull - and would be, in many games of this type...
...but because Laika's traversal is different, the structural simplicity and mechanical similarity of the missions is largely immaterial. 
Simply getting to "X" in a particular area is the game. 

The combination of the player requiring very precise and technical traversal, combined with extremely fast and deadly combat means that even returning to an area previously explored gets old far less quickly than it might in other games - and Laika also does a smart thing, in that with each major step forward in the narrative (generally every 2-3 main story missions) there is a narrative-tied increase in the numbers of - and placement of - enemies across all areas. 

That means that while a late game mission that requires returning to an early game area might be a familiar route, the game remains engaging, because the combination of traversal and combat models means that even a single new enemy being added to a particular spot can drastically alter the approach the player must take - and requires more of them. 
Certain areas that are well used in the game - routes that are travelled back and forth over many times throughout - may have begun as relatively simple areas, where each ramp or jump requires only a well placed pistol shot while pulling a wheelie...
...but when there are more enemies in trickier spots, might require full 720-degree flips, blocking incoming shots, multiple reloads, wheelies at perfect timings and a good dollop of improvisation and luck to traverse in the later game. 

Visually, Laika: Aged Through Blood looks very nice.
It has a "thick-outlined", graphical design to its hand-drawn character models that - truth be told - I think looks a little less good when zoomed in close (as the game does when Laika is off her bike,) - however, in motion, and during the majority of the game it works very well. The actual character designs are very good - there is a lot of personality in the characters, and the design of the wastelands different areas are all very well done. 

 

The game has an interesting problem to solve with its environmental designs, in fact, in that it needs to marry together the physical and gameplay requirements for everything to be designed with the bike traversal in mind, but the narrative tone requires a bleak, lonesome, evocative wasteland from an artistic point of view. I think the balance struck is remarkably well done. While the gameplay is placed first and foremost (as it should be,) the artistic flourishes used to render a beautifully harsh and desolate world on top of that goes far enough that detains of the history of the world can be found, and each environment is a joy to see, even while serving the traversal primarily. 

Audio in Laika: Aged Through Blood is something very, very special, and needs to be mentioned - as even in a game with very high quality gameplay, a great narrative, good writing and nice visuals, I still think the clear highlight is the score!

The whole game, despite the bleak harsh, relentless and sometimes hyper-violent tone and pace, is scored in direct opposition to this - with a soulful, beautiful, wistful female-led album of tracks by Becolí. (Becolí, for anyone who might remember, is the artist who scored the rather beautiful The Longest road on Earth - the "game-as-pastiche-music-video" I reviewed sever years back... and if anything, this collection is even better than that album was.)

 

The auditory dissonance between the beautiful, calm, soulful soundtrack and the hyper-violent, frenetic gameplay is really unusual - and it works an absolute charm. There are a small collection of tracks available from the start, which play over the game (and, in a smart, Hotline-Miami like way, do not reset or interrupt during the (many) deaths and rebirths the player will endure,) but this collection is added to as a narrative element tied to a side activity, via the collection of cassette tapes in the world. 
It's a neat way to tie a collectible into a tangible benefit (not wholly original - I recall, for example, Assassin's Creed: Black Flag doing a similar thing with its sea shanties,) - but the fact that such a powerful element of the tone and personality of Laika: Aged Through Blood is manifest via the music, makes finding these a real highlight.

Overall, Laika: Aged Through Blood is a heck of a game!

 

It's one that can be quite tricky to pick up initially, particularly for those not hugely well versed in these kind of "Trials-like" controls, as they can feel a little unusual, and the extreme deadliness of the game (where a single mis-aligned landing will result in death,) means that the game's learning curve can feel rather punitive initially...
...but the art, music and the general mechanical finesse of the game is enough to carry the player over that hump - and the game they find on the other side of it is something quite original, and extremely well made and executed.

It's a game where gameplay is the key, and that gameplay is very good...
... but it also has art, narrative and music that more than pull their weight.

 

Laika: Aged Through Blood is a game that can feel punishingly difficult at times...
...but never in a way that makes the player want to walk away.
It only ever makes them want to get better! 
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

For ranking Laika: Aged Through Blood, the first point I looked at was other 2D metroidvania, or Rogue-like games. Laika: Aged Through Blood isn't actually a rogue-like per-se, however, it does have some of the mechanical gameplay elements in common with some notable rogue-likes, like Dead Cells or Rogue Legacy, in the sense of being a 2D, largely traversal-based game with high stakes and quick, brutal deaths.

 

The one game that really stood out as a comparison was Dandara. Dandara is a good comparison point, as it is also a metroidvania with an interesting traversal mechanic, a good look, a similar price point... and purely from a personal point of view, also surprised me with it's level of quality and finesse!

I think in the one on one match-up, Laika: Aged Through Blood certainly takes the win on music, and I would say, while both are good, the combat and the boss battles in Laika are slightly ahead of Dandara, but I think the visual style and art design of Dandara wins out over Laika, as does the lore and narrative.
Laika has it's interesting traversal, which is great, but Dandara's is a little more original - Laika is using a model seen in other genres, and making it original in application, but Dandara's feels more original fundamentally, so I think it takes the win there.

 

It's actually closer than I might have expected, but I do think Dandara holds its spot.

A Little further down the list though, came two games - one, a 2D metroidvania/rogue-lite hybrid that also has an animated look and great (if less original) traversal - Treasures of the Aegean - and one right below it that is a 3D isometric game, but plays in a similar broad area of "smaller-game with style and quick combat" - Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light.

 

I think, in a matchup with Laika: Aged Through Blood, Treasures of the Aegean does lose out in some areas - certainly on music, and on combat - but Treasures of the Aegean is more puzzling in nature, which Laika doesn't do. Treasures of the Aegean wins on visuals, but Laika: Aged Through Blood  takes the win on narrative, and while Laika: Aged Through Blood has the novelty of traversal, and does win - it's very close, as Treasures of the Aegean is less original, but smooth as silk and equally as fun.

 

It was very tough, but I think Treasures of the Aegean just manages to hang onto its place, primarily because it has the whole puzzle element, which I think counter's Laika: Aged Through Blood's combat puzzles effectively...
...but I think in a direct matchup, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light has to take a knee and accept defeat from Laika: Aged Through Blood.

Laika: Aged Through Blood wins that fight on audio and on visuals, and the fundamental gameplay is just a little too good for even Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light's good puzzles and fun combat to compete.

As such, Laika: Aged Through Blood finds its well deserved high placement on the ranking!
 

 

 

 

 

 

Chained Echoes

 

 

Summary: 

 

A kickstarted pixel-art RPG, designed as a throwback and loving tribute to the 16-bit era SNES JRPGs of the 1990s, Chained Echoes, from virtual one-man-developer Matthias Linda, pulls together elements of Chrono Trigger, Illusion of Gaia, Secret of Mana and a host of other formative JRPGs, adds in a level of grimness and narrative complexity on top, and crafts a long and winding tale of a band of heroes fighting to end a war between kingdoms in the land of Valandis. 

 

Taking the RPG trope of a disparate group of mismatched heroes, bound together by common fate, and pitting them against a seemingly unstoppable and world-threatening calamity, Chained Echoes wears its influences very much both on its sleeve, and as a badge of honour - pulling together seemingly every RPG trope of those older, much lauded games, and fitting them all together in a single, complicated narrative in a single, complicated game...
...which does its level best to hold together...
...but doesn't really manage to pull it off.

Starting with the good elements first, I think it's safe to say that, visually, Chained Echoes is a winner.
 
It's a pixel-art game, and one playing very much in the "this could have actually existed on 16-bit hardware" style of throwback pixel-art. 
Unlike something like the recently released Sea of Stars, which also harkens back to a similar era, but uses some extra flourishes and effects that would have been impossible back in the 90s, Chained Echoes plays it pretty straight with its nostalgia aesthetic, using a pixel density and breadth of effects that much more closely resemble an actual 16-bit era aesthetic. 

 

To be clear, I think there is room for both, and both can work very effectively, and Chained Echoes is a fine example of the "could have been" style. It works in the more "3/4 Overhead" view, as the original Chrono Trigger or Zelda games did, as opposed to more isometric/ oblique view, as Sea of Stars tended towards, which helps the direct nostalgia, and the art design on characters - and particularly on enemies and environments is fun and colourful and well done. 

There is a nice variety of art too: there are a fair breadth of characters (too many, perhaps, as some are rather under utilised,) and a wealth of different locations and spaces, and they remain fun to explore and to see throughout the whole game.

 

The feel of nostalgia carries over to the audio too - which is decent...
...though in that case, I do think that is one area in which my personal proximity to playing Sea of Stars doesn't help Chained Echoes. 

The music in Chained Echoes is fine, and sometimes genuinely catchy...
...but Sea of Stars's music was excellent on a level that is rare, and because Chained Echoes and Sea of Stars are both playing is the same wheelhouse - both in terms of genre, inspiration and throwback - comparison is impossible to avoid, and the music in Chained Echoes doesn't even come close to the music in Sea of Stars.
Chained Echoes never sounds bad - in fact, it sounds pretty good - but it cannot be denied that it exists at a time where another, more accomplished, more popular, and fundamentally better game - Sea of Stars - came along shortly afterwards, and now casts a fairly dark shadow over it.

 

Art design and audio are, of course, a big part of RPG games - of all games, really, but are particularly important parts of throwback-style games, as they are the primary ways in which the older games being aped can be referenced and paid homage - and they are important.

Chained Echoes getting those elements right is a good thing, and is admirable...
...however, unfortunately, that is pretty much the end of the positive things to be said about the game.

Chained Echoes is...
... something of a mess. 

Visually and auditorially it works perfectly, but narratively, mechanically and stylistically... it is a bit of a whiff.

 

The trouble with Chained Echoes, fundamentally, is that it feels like a victim of "fandom-driven-creativity." 
It feels like a game made by someone who absolutely loves those SNES era JRPGs, and genuinely wants to pay loving tribute to them...
... but who has played them so exhaustively that they have lost sight of what made them good at the outset, and likely drew them into the genre in the first place. 

They likely felt dissatisfied after mastering the genre, and wished for more complexity to dig into... forgetting that the complexity of systems is something reserved for the end-games, for the player already steeped in the game, and for the player who already fell in love with the game on a more narrative and emotional level.

 

To find a metaphorical example of the general problem of "fan-driven-creativity", one only need to look at Mario Maker. 
Remember Mario Maker? 
Mario Maker was a brilliant game. It democratised the level making tools of a Mario game very well, allowing fans to make their own levels and share them, and many of these fan-made levels were excellent. However - a staggering number of the most competently made levels, made by the people who were the biggest fans of Mario, ended up being brutally difficult to the point that they were inaccessible to anyone not steeped in that same level of mastery. 

 

The reason was simple - those people who are the biggest fans of Mario, had spent 30 years playing those games, and had an absolute mastery of the finer nuances of the mechanics. They had gone beyond the point of "regular" levels and had mastered the games to such a degree, that they could barely fathom the idea of someone who wasn't at that level - and ended up making levels that were simply out of reach of the average player. They had lost sight of what made Mario great in the first place, in pursuit of only the "top end" of skill-requirement, because that's all they had left.

 

Now, Chained Echoes is not the same in terms of difficulty. It isn't a hugely difficult game on its "standard" settings...
... but it does have a lot of the same feel in terms of obtuse mechanical complexity. 

The old SNES JRPGs were great - they were whimsical tales, full of humour and secrets and fun and silliness, and had a certain level of complexity of systems, and of narrative, that varied from game to game, but generally capped out towards their respective "end-games".

Matthias Linda clearly loves those games, and Chained Echoes does - in some ways, very well - echo those games, and reference them in clever ways - both on a macro and micro level. 
The general art design is very much a loving homage to Chrono Trigger, and I would say a particularly well observed and well implemented one: not only is the pixel art of that style, but even things like the proportions of characters, and the way they move and follow one another, or the way encounters work - with enemies visible on the playfield, and the characters "taking their places" art the start of each encounter.

 

There are also specific references designed to tickle the nostalgia-bones of gamers who loved those games (of which, I am one!) - for example, a neat little intro bait-and-switch, where a main character awakens in a bedroom, woken by their mother, to a celebratory fair outside, in an almost 1:1 recreation of the introductory opening to Chrono Trigger... 
...before their mother begins yelling at them to wake up, and they realise that is the dream, and they are being shaken awake to their rather more grim and dire reality. 

Moments like that one are neat - they are done well...
...but they are also evidence of how well steeped in SNES RPGs Matthias Linda is, and that love and familiarity is the biggest downfall of Chained Echoes.

 

Chained Echoes feels like a game designed by someone who has played every one of those games at the "end-game" point for years, and has mastered them so completely, that they can only see them for the complexity of their systems, and not for the whimsical, fantastical, simple but engaging and fun tales they were. 
He pined for more complexity to fill the gap left by his mastery...
...and then made a game, and crammed that complexity into every available area...
... without ever asking "but wait... will this actually be fun?"

 

Mechanically, the game is absolutely sodden with systems - there are systems for weapon upgrades and attachments, micro and macro management of different concepts in battle, aggro, sliders for optimum attacking and defence, a tremendously irksome and superfluous add-on battle system used when fighting in sky-armours (that is entirely different to the also needlessly over-complicated standard battle system)...
...and almost none of these systems feels particularly beneficial to the experience. 

Each one might - on  its own - act as an interesting signature for the game, but because they are all present at once, it makes for a game that - particularly during battles (of which there are hundreds) - feels so stilted and bogged down, that it gets difficult to find a groove, and even more difficult to enjoy.

 

Take, for example, the "Overdrive" system. 
This is a mechanic where, in every battle, a party-wide "balance bar" is constantly in play, with a yellow, green and red portion, and a slider moving up and down the bar. Each different action a character takes moves the slider by set amounts, but generally, attacks increase it, and defence moves reduce it. When in green, the party do more and take less damage, and in red, they do less and receive more. 

 

It's the kind of mechanic that might seem interesting or clever on paper...
...but the reality of such a system, is simply adding a layer of "oh, I need to wait and defend when I could be attacking" - slowing down the pace of battle, and requiring micro-management with no real justification, or gameplay benefit. 
It's the kind of extra, convoluted complexity that simply has no reason to exist - it complicates, without feeling earned or justified, and simply forces the player to take longer to do things they want to do, without adding anything to the overall enjoyment.

 

It also - I guess beneficially, though that is a rather generous way of looking at it - is not punitive enough to matter...
... so essentially, it is a layer of complexity that the player is best placed, simply to ignore - since the benefits of using it effectively generally do not outweigh the costs of ignoring it. 
While the player will receive more incoming damage if they let themselves shoot into the "red zone"... they will likely still be better off just wailing on the enemy full throttle, and ending the fight faster, than trying to manage and use the overdrive system as intended.

 

That kind of system is all over Chained Echoes - the "complex, but largely ineffectual distraction".

Another perfect example is the weapon and armour "slot" system.
Players are constantly finding crystals around the world, that have little pellets of ore with different buffs. These have their own complete system for upgrading, with purity mechanics, combining mechanics, slotting mechanics for adding them to weapons or armour etc, and this whole system is a lengthly and byzantine process...
...and what the player learns, after several hours of toying with it, is that the benefits doing so - the minor buffs weapons and armour can be given - are not in any way powerful enough to justify the absurd level of fiddly faffing about they would need to do to make use of them.

By around 6 hours into the game, I simply stopped adding these to any weapons or armour, and found myself at no disadvantage, even in optional, top tier fights...
...so the question is "What is the point?"

 

Complex systems in a game like Chained Echoes can be fun - but they have to be beneficial enough to the player to make learning them and engaging with them worthwhile. Otherwise, they are simply extra layers of nonsense on an already busy and stat-heavy menu screen, distracting from the "core" of the game - and serve only to play into the old stereotype that RPGs are for nerds, and look like excel tables with pixel-art drawn on top.

 

The narrative suffers from the same fundamental problem too.

 

The narrative was usually - in the old SNES JRPGs Chained Echoes is a tribute to -  a whimsical, sweeping, yet relatively simple tale. 
The narrative in Chained Echoes, so absurdly over-stuffed and over-complex - particularly during the first half - that it loses the player, almost immediately. 
The story feels like it is trying to combine the SNES RPG with something as complex and dour as a Game of Thrones, with multiple warring kingdoms, and a huge cast of tertiary characters and agendas... 
...and results in enormous lore-dumps about off-screen kingdoms and political intrigue that not only doesn't matter to the main plot, but largely serves to distract the player from what the actual plot is. 

 

In the early game - the first 5-6 hours - I literally had given up on following the over-complex lore dumps about largely unseen characters...
...and found virtually none of that information to actually matter in the latter half of the game, where the story does start to get more focussed, and the real plot reveals itself.

It is a shame, because there IS actually the spine of a pretty good narrative in Chained Echoes, once it congeals enough to be identified, and gets a chance to stretch its wings in the back half, after a lot of pointless pontificating and unimportant characters are sloughed off. 
There are many elements that work, particularly later in the game...
...however, there is another issue, in that no sooner does the narrative gets a chance to taker proper shape, than the game enters its path towards the finale, and begins to really jump the shark, in the form of a constant stream of compounding "record-scratch" plot twists, to the point of exhaustion.

 

That feels, again, like an issue of fandom-created-media - like the developer loved the few moments from old SNES era JRPGs where a huge, plot-changing twist was revealed, and so decided to replicate that.
And did so.
In every cutscene.

 

The problem, of course, is those moments were memorable because they were rare. The plot of Chained Echoes gets a record-scratch-worthy plot twist so often that they stop having any impact.
By the time I reached the actual finale, after the 9th or 10th big plot-twisting reveal, I had pretty much given up, and was simply asking "okay, what's the next "big twist" with the detached, glassy stare of someone who barely remembers what the original idea of the plot actually was.

 

The other big issue with the narrative is more fundamental even than those issues...
... it isn't funny.

 

Now, most of the great JRPGs of the 16-bit era had grand, serious, world-ending or world-endangering plots, full of high drama, emotion, moments of levity and sadness...
...but fundamentally, they were all pretty whimsical and light, even despite those dire circumstances. 

Chrono Trigger was about saving the world... but there were genuinely funny moments between memorable and loveable characters all throughout.

Hell - Final Fantasy VI has the world literally suffer a cataclysm, and enter a "post-apocalyptic" state... 
...but it also had a running battle in which a wrestler could suplex a sentient train, and an opera performed for an incompetent and malevolent octopus. 

Those games - the best of them - had characters in terrible situations, but those characters were lovable, or lovably evil, and fun to be around.
There was a level of winking humour baked-in, which offset the direness, and made them fun to play.

 

Chained Echoes doesn't have any of that.
Its plot is dire in consequence and its villains evil - but they are "nasty evil," not "fun-evil".
the "Big Bad" in Chained Echoes isn't a Sephiroth or a Kefka - he's a Joffrey Baratheon.

The heroes, also, are generally both relatively forgettable, largely humourless... and often mean-spirited and genuinely unlikeable. 
Several are outright assholes. 
There are a couple of characters that feel like genuine throwbacks to the SNES era - a "queen of thieves" named Sienna, and a mage named Magenta are characters one could see slotting into one of those great old games well - but for the most part, the characters in Chained Echoes are either forgettably bland, or repellant douche-nozzles. 
One character - Robb, an archer, and protector of an errant princess - is clearly supposed to have a "redemption arc", going from being a dick to seeing the error of his ways... but his "assholiness" in the early game is so overblown, that it's virtually impossible to buy into that arc, and the player simply ends up hating him more than most of the actual "bad guys"!

Fundamentally, Chained Echoes is something of a disappointment, because while it has a lot of the elements required to craft a really good throwback, nostalgia-tickling pixel-art RPG - and occasionally, during simple sections of dungeon crawling or side-questing, does get there - it feels like in its zeal to encompass and amalgamate every possible thing anyone could love about every one of those older games, it loses focus completely, and ends up missing out the really important fundamental elements of those games.

 

Rather than implementing one or two clever mechanical systems as those games did, it implements 30 of them, without considering that they don't all work together, or serve the game effectively. 

Rather than implement one great, grand twist, it adds 20, and forgets that with each one, they dilute the impact of them all.

Rather than have a focussed narrative with a clear plot, it has 12 plots, and all of them serve only to distract from one another, and end up so overstuffed that something has to give...
... and what ends up being left out, is the most important thing - the humour and the fun.

It may sound harsh - and I don't want it to sound too harsh, as there are good things and fun to be found in Chained Echoes - but the honest feeling I got when playing it, is the idea of a game built by algorithm: 
a game designed by feeding in all the elements of many great games into a blender, but without an innate understanding of why they were great.
An algorithm that can easily replicate the functions of those games, but has no ability to replicate the feel of them.

 

That feels like a particularly pointed and harsh metaphor, I know - particularly since the opposite should be true, given the virtual one-man-developer status - and I absolutely do believe that Matthias Lucas genuinely loves the games he seeks to emulate...
... but I simply can't think of a better way to summarise my feeling when playing Chained Echoes.
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

So the problem with ranking Chained Echoes, is that I don't play a lot of throwback RPGs...
... and of the ones I have played, a fair few are still to be ranked. 
The ones that are on the list, and are certainly in the same wheelhouse as Chained Echoes - Sea of Stars and Airoheart - are both significantly better, so not really useful as a comparison.

 

Instead, looking down the list a bit, towards the "some fun to be had, but with significant problems" area, are two such games though - Rainbow Moon, and (ranked a bit lower still,) Adventure of Mana.

 

Now, for all the issues I think Chained Echoes has, I do think it quite easily outranks Adventure of Mana. Adventure of Mana is a much simpler game - too simple really, in terms of narrative especially - and while Chained Echoes has a lot of problems in its plot and pacing, it does have high points, and those rise well above Adventure of Mana's narrative. 

Adventure of Mana is also quite an ugly looking game, and say what you want about Chained Echoes, but it looks great. It also plays better, even despite the myriad annoying systems, and so I think it comfortably leaps over Adventure of Mana.

 

Rainbow Moon, however, is a tougher fight. I think Chained Echoes wins on visuals, though Rainbow Moon isn't a bad looking game, and music is, I think, about an even match. Both games have problems with over complexity and lack of focus mechanically...
...but I think Rainbow Moon has less issues there, as well as less problems with things like narrative, and has the more ingratiating and stronger characters. 
The scope of Chained Echoes is greater, but I think it muddles itself so much, that actually, that isn't much of a benefit beyond having a broader range of environments...
...and fundamentally, I think Rainbow Moon is the more fun game to actually play through.

 

I therefore concluded that Chained Echoes needs to rank lower than Rainbow Moon...
... however, the game right below it is Far Cry 6.

 

Far Cry 6 is a weird one, because it is a very pretty looking game - gorgeous, in fact - however, it suffers for a lack of ideas, while Chained Echoes suffers for an overabundance of them. 
The narrative of Chained Echoes is over complicated and dour... but Far Cry 6's narrative is simply dull. It doesn't fail due to doing to much, it fails by doing nothing.

The clincher though, is that despite Far Cry 6 still having a nice shooting model and playing well, I do think I'd replay Chained Echoes again before replaying it, and that speaks volumes...
...so Chained Echoes should rank above it.

 

With no other games between those two, Chained Echoes finds its spot!
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thirst Suitors

 

 

Summary: 

 

A curious hybrid of cooking sim, skating game, dating sim and light RPG, Thirsty Suitors, from Outerloop games (developers of Falcon Age,) combines various elements of different genres, and blends them together with a psychedelic, 90s-retro, over-the-top and vivacious aesthetic to serve a narrative that is part Ghost World, part Kamikaze Girls, part Young Adult, and all Scott Pilgrim.

 

Taking the role of Jala - a young South Asian-American woman, returning to her home town for her estranged sister's wedding. Jala, a somewhat flighty and flakey, yet oddly-endearing hot-mess, left the town with a girlfriend who has, after 3 years, kicked her out...
...and is returning to something of an emotional mess she left in her wake.

 

Her relationship with her parents - her stern, overbearing mother and her soft-spoken, eternally loveable father - is fractured, her sister is mad and avoiding her, and her former best friend and a string of exes from grade and high-school are waiting to exact their revenge or take the emotional pound of flesh they feel they are owed for the various infractions she visited upon them before she left. 

Over the course of the week or so leading up to the wedding, Jala must reckon with the exes that are gunning for her, find and smooth her relationship with her sister, navigate a treacherous path of South Asian family dynamics, deal with a strange cult of mascot-worshipping skaters that have overtaken the younger kids in town...
...and deal with that most perilous and dire of family fears: A visit from her battle-axe of a grandmother!

Narratively, Thirsty Suitors is quite unusual, and pretty good.

The story is, of course, a fairly high concept one - and structurally, is hard to not to compare to Scott Pilgrim... in the sense that while in this case the exes are Jala's own, and not a lovers, the actual resulting structure is largely the same. Each of the exes who feel wronged by her past actions form one of the main "bosses" for each chapter (split up by days) and they are all somewhat working together, united by their mutual antipathy towards Jala.

What sets it apart, however, (aside form the fact that Thirsty Suitors is good, and Scott Pilgrim - at least, as a movie, was very much not,) is that most, if not all, of Jala's exes do actually have a genuine beef with Jala, rather than it simply being a story about a kid fighting over someone else.

While many of her mistakes are fairly understandable given the age she was, (a certain amount of youthful indiscretion is understandable in school-aged kids, after all,) and don't necessarily put her beyond the player liking her, they are, for the most part, ones where the exes themselves holding a grudge is perfectly understandable.
The game walks a fairly high tightrope, in that it needs to make both Jala, and her exes, feel somewhat lovable and endearing - or at least, not repel the player - while also having the infractions committed in the past be realistic enough - and grave enough - to justify simmering resentment. 

 

I think for the most part - at least in the case of the bigger, more plot-important ones - it pulls that off.
I've certainly heard some players say they baulked at Jala as a character, and consider her to be too laden with baggage, or too uncaring or unthinking as a protagonist to effectively carry a game like this one...
... but it's not something I ever found to be the case myself. 
I am, of course, much older, but I do still just about remember high-school and the relationships that happen there, and they were always messy and flighty and tempestuous - it's a stew of hormones, with a group still finding their way in the world, and figuring out who they want to be - and not to be - and such relationships get messy quickly.
Actually, (partly depending on the choices made by the player to some extent, but even regardless of that,) the Jala that we play as in the "present" is, while certainly sardonic and sarcastic, shown to be relatively conscientious and considerate to the people around her. She is certainly able - and willing - to cut someone down, or hit them where it hurts emotionally, but she doesn't seem to do that without cause, and spends most of the game owning her past mistakes, as that is kinda the whole point...
...so I have a hard time holding her school-age indiscretions against her, since anyone with a pulse has at least one similar story!

Part of the reason the game is able to walk that emotional tightrope, is that for all the over-the-top, fantastical elements of the game - and it has many - the bright, psychedelic look, the flamboyance of the movement and the design, and the general leaning towards the extravagant and outlandish in terms of tone and aesthetic...
...the actual conversations and dialogue, and the specific emotional content is oddly grounded and real - and often surprisingly well observed and handled. 
It makes for a clever dichotomy, where relatively serious, heavy or nuanced relationship elements can be dealt with in a deceptively light way, because there is so much brash, unadulterated flamboyance in the art design or all the metaphorical elements around it, that it's only once a "battle" is in full swing, that the player even notices that the writing is getting curiously sharp and well observed in its actual content.

That's sort of the method the game employs in all facets actually - making the obvious, immediate visuals and mechanical "game" parts light and fluffy and silly, but folding the more emotional and plot-critical dialogue in amongst it. 
Jala's cooking mini-game, for example, is where she has virtually all her most unguarded conversations with both her parents... 
...and it allows the player to absorb all that dialogue in a fun way. It can get into the weeds of the emotional elements without getting bogged down in them.

Aside from the purely narrative, conversational elements of the game that carries the brunt of the plot and writing, there are essentially three prongs to the mechanical game: the previously mentioned cooking, "Fighting," and Skateboarding.

Fighting in the game is all metaphorical, and using a turn-based, JRPG-inspired model, but transposing all the violence of those games into metaphorical elements representing verbal sparring and jibes - and while the fights are never particularly difficult, or a genuine barrier to progress, that isn't really the point. The point is to show a psychedelic, strange, flamboyant metaphor for conversations, and in that sense the implementation is very clever, and often funny.

There is something rather clever about the idea that each character has fundamental weaknesses based on their own character flaws, and their specific relationship to Jala - some are still into her, and weak to a "thirsty" attack or flirting, others are quick to anger or still simmering, and open to an "angering" attack, others are prideful and self important, and can be easily weakened using an appropriate "insulting" type attack. 

Seeing things like the JRPG trope of "summon" attacks be transposed here, to where Jala can call her stern mother, or her body-builder Auntie, or even some of her exes that she has made amends with to perform flamboyant special attacks is silly and fun - and the over-the-top spectacle of those old summons, when translated into similarly over-the-top spectacular attacks from these "regular people" is neat and fun.

 

Many of the fights are plot critical ones - every chapter has some form of "Boss Battle", generally one of Jala's exes - and these fights contain a large amount of unique dialogue and plot critical narrative that plays out within the battle itself, but even smaller plot beats generally culminate is some for of "fight".

There aren't "random battles" in the traditional RPG sense, however, there is the option to engage with non-critical battles as a way to level up or simply for fun - in the form of present that are dotted around the main town location. These take the form of a dice-rolled "Gift or Grift" mechanic, giving either a small amount of money, or resulting in a battle against procedurally generated "suitors" - other south Asian men (and some women) who are responding to matrimonial adverts placed on Jala's behalf (and behind her back) by her grandmother...
...the largely unseen matriarchal ruler of the family, living in India and still exerting a domineering influence on the family, and who provides the catalyst for the the game's finale.

The cooking mini-game is pretty neat. Jala can, generally at the beginning of each new chapter before leaving the house, be taught a new recipe by either her loving, if stern, passive-aggressive and judgemental mother, or her more soft-spoken, calm but emotionally-intelligent and astutely observing father, and these take the form of a sort of QTE-heavy test of skill, interspersed with plot-adjacent discussions of the goings on or the history of the family. 

These sections actually form a particularly meaty part of the family dynamic sub plot of the game - which becomes more and more the focus as the narrative progresses, and lead to the actual finale of the game - but mechanically, are pretty fun too - and have a tendency, as many cooking games can - to make the player quite hungry!
The dishes being cooked are real, South Asian meals, and all the talk of preparing the ingredients, and the comments about the meals themselves, when complete - particularly if Jala gets it perfect, with "3-stars" can make the stomach grumble, as they sound delicious!

The skating element of the game is, arguably, the weakest part. For what it actually constitutes in the game, is perfectly serviceable - but not much more than that. Essentially, all traversal in the game outside of buildings is done on a skateboard, and the controls are somewhat analogous to earlier Tony Hawk games, though the actual trick variety is relatively limited, and - since there is only really two outdoor areas to the game - the environmental variety pretty slight.  

 

There isn't anything particularly negative about the skating per se, but it is rather simplistic and un-nuanced, and tends to have such a wide "hit-box" in terms of catching environmental obstacles for tricks and grinds, that it can actually get a little tricky to simply go from A to B, as Jala will often accidentally end up in a trick when the player is simply trying to skate past something!

There are a series of optional skating challenges spread across the two areas - set by the mysterious and bizarre park mascot / cult leader in a bear mask who has claimed the never-opened skate-park as his own - and these can be fun, however, the lack of fine tuning finesse in the skating model can make them a bit more frustrating than they really should be, with it being difficult at times to accurately gauge what direction a jump or a grind will exit into.

Really though, the skating, like the cooking and the combat, is following a specific model and function - that the actual nitty-gritty of the mechanics are not necessarily finessed to the level one might require in a game where that was the sole action, but is perfectly serviceable as part of a tapestry.  
While a game that was simply the Thirsty Suitors skating alone, expanded to a full game, would really show up how limited the mechanics of that element are, as part of a big, silly, flamboyant, colourful mix, it serves primarily as just another arrow in the kaleidoscopic quiver, and serves well enough in that regard. 

Visually, Thirsty Suitors is not playing in the higher end of technical graphics, but it is a game that uses its art-design extremely well, making for an aesthetic that is distinct and dripping with style. Thirsty Suitors is certainly a game playing on its stylishness as a selling point, and it does it well - and virtually every element of the game is given some interesting aesthetic design choice or slightly outrageous, heightened element to it.
Whether it's the way Jala will do a cartwheel when entering her home, or a backflip to come down the stairs, or the way suitors she is about to battle will walking into frame on their hands, or the way the pattern on their shirt is textured as if independent of their actual movement - everything in the game is done slightly oddly - for no real reason, other than that it makes for a fun visual palate! 

The game seems to fall, artistically, somewhere between an early 90's MTV music video, a psychedelic Saturday morning cartoon, and a Bollywood musical production - and it works, primarily because it is imbued with all the exuberance and the "ironic-but-not-ironic" zest that all three of those influences bring.
There's an ostentatious ridiculousness to the level to which everything in the game is heightened, but it's done with an ironic wink - which is serving to both disguise and make palatable the more emotional content, and to simply imbue everything with a smirking, gleeful sense of fun...
...but as much as that kind of "throw everything at the wall" type of design can be overpowering, the developer does seem to have a pretty good notion of exactly how far to push into the realm of the fantastical and over-the-top, without quite losing grip on reality...
... so the whole game maintains itself just on the cusp of absurdity, without ever tipping beyond reach.

 

Audio is very good - the voice work is excellent generally, and helps a lot to give the counterpoint to the more flamboyant elements, by having actors who can deliver the more serious lines with some emotional heft behind them when called for, and can deliver jokes with the right inflection, and Thirsty Suitors has both.

 

The music too - is decent - there is a lot of it, and it fits the bill nicely...
...though I will say, that in a game this style-heavy and original, there would probably be room for a little more in the way of really memorable tunes. 
I enjoyed the music in the game for what it was, but I didn't ever find myself humming it outside of the game, or finding myself looking to listen to it on Spotify or anything. That's not a knock against a game necessarily, but in this particular style of indie game, that has often been the case, and in a game so wrapped up in a retro aesthetic - and specifically, one as musically inclined as Thirsty Suitors is - it probably does speak to a little weaker a soundtrack than one might have hoped for. 

Overall Thirsty Suitors is not a power-house, but it is a good game, and a quite original one.

It isn't doing anything mechanically that hasn't been done before - all three of its mechanical pillars are ones imported from other genres, and none are finessed to the most exacting degree...
...but the simple combination of genres, the nippy pacing, the cool concept, the good writing, and the likeable cast of characters make for a good time regardless.

The stylish signature look and genuinely uplifting and upbeat art-style, mixed with the disarmingly sharp and smart dialogue makes for a game that goes down easy, doesn't wear out its welcome, and keeps the player engaged all the way through its modest run time.
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

Thirsty Suitors, being quite a unique game, doesn't have a bunch of super-obvious comparison points, but two games did come to mind that have a few things in common for a starting point: Sayonara Wild Hearts, and Flipping Death.

Sayonara Wild Hearts, due to the psychedelic visuals and concept - flamboyant aesthetic and gameplay as metaphor - and Flipping Death, for it's likeable-if-rather-flawed female protagonist, and the use of humour and absurdity to disguise some more serious subjects being dealt with.

 

A little thin? Perhaps...
...but it gave me the hook I needed for a floor and ceiling - because while I like a lot of elements of Thirsty Suitors, I don't see it competing with Sayonara Wild Hearts, which still takes the edge on visuals, definitely takes it on music, and I think while it is done much more subtly and vaguely, does have its own level of emotional content dealt with - albeit via more visual metaphor. 

Thirsty Suitors is a good, rounded experience, with multiple gameplay types, but none are particularly finessed - whereas Sayonara Wild Hearts does one thing, but does it super tightly...
...and I think holistically, Sayonara comes out the pretty clear winner overall.

Flipping Death, on the other hand, is a good adventure game - one I have a real fondness for, but I do struggle to see Thirsty Suitors ranking below it. For all the fun to be had in Flipping Death, I think Thirsty Suitors offers some of the same fun, with quite a bit more in the way of narrative emotionality, originality and sheer verve and style... and while Flipping Death is funnier - Thirsty Suitors has the more memorable characters, the better overall look, and the more engaging gameplay.

That leaves a fair spread of game between...
... and one that is hard to ignore in that spread - given Thirsty Suitor's skating element - is Rollerdrome.

 

Rollerdrome is, of course, purely an action / sports game. It's roller-derby / hyper-violence arenas are the primary focus of the game, whereas Thirsty Suitors has its narrative front and centre, and skateboarding is just one element...
...but it is a pretty large element, and while it is functional, Rollerdrome - of course - has it beat hands down on that front.

In a one-on-one match up, of course Thirsty Suitors takes the win on narrative...
...but even against a game as interesting looking and stylish as Thirsty Suitors, I do think the gorgeous cell-shading of Rollerdrome has to take the win. It's such a good look, that it's tough to beat, no matter how much style is put up against it! 

Rollerdrome also does have the longevity that Thirsty Suitors doesn't, and fundamentally, I do have to come back to the idea that while Thirsty Suitors does a lot of different things mechanically - it doesn't do any of them with the finesse that Rollerdrome does its one thing.
Add in that Rollerdrome takes the win on music, and I think Rollerdrome has to keep its spot.

There's only a handful of games between Flipping Death and Rollerdrome, and it really comes down to feel and intuition, as they are not really comparable genres.
While I'm comfortable stating that Thirsty Suitors is slightly more awesome than Operation Tango, Critter Crunch, The Last Campfire and the original Ratchet and Clank...
...I do have trouble saying it's more awesome than Chime Sharp - which takes a crowded and difficult genre to do something new in, and does something new very well.

 

There's basically no way, other than "overall" to compare the two...
...but that feels right, and when I step back and look at the list in that arrangement, it still feels right...

...so that means Thirsty Suitors finds its spot!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

oOo: Ascension

 

 

Summary: 

 

A smaller scale, arcade-style maze-racing puzzle game from Extra Mile Studios, originally released for Nintendo Switch in 2018 and brought to the Playstation in 2020, oOo: Ascension puts a cool new twist on a well worn, classic genre. 

 

Taking all the bones of one of the oldest forms of action game - the high-speed obstacle puzzle - and applying a sleek, neon-future aesthetic, a synthetic,  ambient electronica soundtrack, and some very smooth, high-frame-rate gameplay, oOo: Ascension puts a spin the genre - literally - by setting every stage on the surface of a rotating sphere.

Across 90 stages, playable in either solo or side-by-side couch co-op race, a different course is crafted on the surface of a floating sphere, with the level constantly rotating on a full 3D axis, meaning the player's controllable ship remains central, but the level rotates around it.

 

Gameplay in oOo: Ascension is very slick and lightning fast - the actual controls of the ship are very simple and easy to pick up - controlled via a single analogue stick, with a speed boost on one shoulder button and a brake on the other - but the minimalist aesthetic and the "level-floating-in-the-void" design means each one is loaded extremely fast, and movement and frame-rate are speedy, making for an extremely frenetic and high-octane pace of play. 

 

The levels themselves are simple - indeed, the majority can be, (and must be, if the player is looking to fully complete the game,) finished in a matter of 10-30 seconds - however, many require quite bit of thought and planning to achieve those speeds, and a fair amount of practice to whittle those completion times down to that level. 

The game is broken up into specific sets - areas - each comprising 10 levels, and each of these areas will generally introduce at least one new mechanical element to the game, as well as be somewhat thematically tied together. 
The first set, for example, is generally simple mazes with set obstacles, whereas another might introduce elements such as switches, portals, moving platforms, enemies that chase the player, walls that must be lowered or platforms that must be raised or moved, and the drip-feed of this constant escalation and variety is pretty well balanced. 

None of the elements introduced ever feel enormously revelatory or unique - indeed, I suspect there is no aspect of oOo: Ascension beyond its novel spherical playfield concept that feels particularly original, however, for a smaller game like this one, that doesn't feel a particularly negative aspect. 

Simply presenting fairly well trodden gameplay, but doing it well, and with a specific, neat twist, does rather feel like all one needs in this case - particularly when the genre itself is - while well trodden generally - one that hasn't actually been in vogue for quite some time. 
Indeed, as games like Shatter and some earlier Housemarque games have proven, the virtual absence of those arcade staples during the PS1-PS3 era, meant that their return (via the explosion onto console, of the earlier indie scene, and in particular, the Xbox Live Arcade,) was welcome and overdue. Simply taking those old staples, adding a modern, sleek look, some good music, and smooth, clean gameplay was more than enough to scratch a itch.

oOo: Ascension is certainly working within that wheelhouse, and not going particularly further - but it's hard to knock it for that, as the actual gameplay feels very good, the visuals are sound, and the game does a bang up job of modernising and adding a spin to the core mechanics.

 

The addition of competitive 2 player works pretty well too - and benefits quite a bit from the spherical design of the levels. Because the screen real estate is - by necessity - cut in half for these instances, a lot of other games in this genre might suffer due to the limitations this would put on the player's peripheral vision of the level. In the case of oOo: Ascension though, because each level is a rotating sphere, neither mode offers particularly more or less visual distance, nor fidelity, so the 2 player mode feels equally as viable and playable as the solo mode.

Visually, as said, the game is pretty nice. There isn't an awful lot going on in oOo: Ascension graphically - it's not a long game, and sits comfortably in the "smaller arcade indie" space, but judged within that space, I think it looks better than most.
It's not going nuts with the particle effects and overlay elements like a Resogun or a Super Stardust or a Shatter does, but the models, while simple, are all pleasing to look at, well rendered, and actually, the spherical design of the mazes is particularly nice. It's fun being able to see each level's "sphere" in the menu, and seen en masse like that, there is a strange, ethereal quality to them floating in the void that looks pretty cool.

 

Audio is decent - the ambient Electronica is fine - though it mostly stays out of the way and has a tendency to blend into the background a little, which is a little disappointing in some sense.  This kind of quick-fire arcade puzzler can, at times, be home to some seriously thumping, great tracks of that nature (I still listen to the Shatter soundtrack on occasion in the car, over a decade after first hearing it!) 
While nothing in oOo: Ascension's soundtrack ever stood out as poor, I'd also note that nothing ever stood out as great either. The whole thing was fine, but I never got the inclination to seek out the soundtrack to listen to absent the game itself.

Overall, oOo: Ascension isn't a game that is likely to wow - it is a smaller experience, and one that pretty much stays in its lane as far as being a simple, arcade speed puzzler...
...but it does that simple game genre proud - bringing it back with a lot of style, a smooth, well worked out challenge curve, some neat visuals, decent music, and has a variety of levels that mean it never wears out its welcome over its full length.

 

It's not a game liable to convert anyone to the genre per se, and isn't as endlessly repeatable or replayable as something like a Shatter, as it is time-based, rather than score-based...
... but for folks who enjoy (or missed) that particular slant of challenging, best-time-setting speed puzzler, it is one that offers good gameplay, with a neat, well implemented signature hook. 
 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

Looking at arcade puzzlers then, oOo: Ascension is a good one, but isn't really operating or seriously competing against some of the other "old-retro-gameplay-with-modern-hooks" type games on the ranking currently - Tetris Effect, Shatter, Nex Machina, Dead Nation etc.

However, it is a quite compulsive and neat spin on old design, and fun, and so I started looking for games in either the arcade or the "arcade puzzler" field, that, while not at the top end of the ranking, are still very fun games that make a good showing.

 

The one that jumped out initially was Chime Sharp.
Chime Sharp is more in the Tetris / Puyo Puyo / Critter Crunch type of genre, however, it has some elements in common with oOo: Ascension. Chime Sharp is the more repeatable and compulsive game, but I think oOo: Ascension gains some ground on its unique twist on an old idea, and probably does beat out Chime sharp on visuals and audio.

Still though, the gameplay and repeatable nature of the game is of paramount importance in these kind of arcade puzzlers, and the fact that generally I think the gameplay is both more addictive, and more replayable in Chime Sharp, does mean it has to keep it's place.

 

Further down the list though, is an interesting match-up: The duel pair of Arcade Game Series: Ms Pac-Man and Arcade Game Series: Pac-Man. 
Now, those are basically 1-to-1 ports of the original arcade games, so not exactly the same thing, however, they suffer a bit on this ranking because of the presence of another game: Pac Man Championship Edition DX. 
That is a game that took all the best of Pac Man, didn't lose any of the magic, but modernised it really well, and made a great package from it. That means it somewhat reduces the stature of "pure" ports of the original games, as there is less reason to play them now, in its wake. (A similar argument, in fact, to EA's lacklustre "Tetris" release. I love Tetris, but the mere existence of Tetris Effect almost forces EA's Tetris downwards, as there is virtually no reason to play it, given the existence of Tetris Effect. 

 

While the original Pac Man games are bonafide classics, the actual ports of them do little beyond simply present that old game - and in 2024, the novelty of those originals has faded a bit, in the wake of good modern versions. While I think the core gameplay of Pac Man as an idea does outmatch the core of oOo: Ascension, I still can't deny that in almost all secondary ways - visuals, music, controls etc oOo: Ascension obviously wins - but even in the primary way, the mere fact that oOo: Ascension is spinning a genre with it's own style does mean I'm comfortable ranking it above a game that is simply re-presenting a very old classic.

There aren't many comparable games in the gulf between Chime Sharp and Arcade Game Series: Ms Pac-Man (the higher ranked of the two Arcade Game Series releases) - there is Critter Crunch, which I think does outrank oOo: Ascension, due to also putting it's own spin on a classic (Puyo Puyo) and making a bit more of a complete, better looking package - but aside from that, it comes down to gut feel.

 

Of the games there, I think both Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, and Don'tNod oddity Remember Me do have to outrank oOo: Ascension...
...but I suspect that, given the choice, I would likely both play - and recommend - oOo: Ascension before IO's odd little family-friendly adventure Mini Ninjas...

 

...so oOo: Ascension finds its spot!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Immortality

 

Summary: 

 

A Mystery / Psychological Horror FMV game from Sam Barlow - of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Her Story and Telling Lies fame - Immortality tasks the player with reviewing archive footage of three "lost" films - cutting room sides, filmed portions of rehearsals, behind-the-scenes documentary footage, audition tapes etc, alongside some tertiary footage such as interviews or commercials - and piecing them together, to make sense of them.

 

Among the hundreds of micro and macro mysteries to be pieced together - who different actors and stage hands are, why certain actors were cast or re-cast, what happened to different people, why each film was not released, who was at odds with who, who made decisions and why...
... the game circles around a grander mystery:
what happened to Marissa Marcel - the enigmatic, vivacious, mysterious and magnetic young woman who was the star of all three films, touched the lives of everyone around her... then promptly vanished?

Note: Immortality is going to be a slightly awkward game to review, because it is a game that I will not spoil. 

 

Now, simply saying "I won't spoil this" is, of course, in some ways, a spoiler. 
It implies there is, in fact, an element that could be spoiled - it lets the player know there is at least some element of the game that is a twist or a deeper mystery...
... however, saying that, I'm not too worried about, for one specific reason: 
The game has already done so.

Immortality is marketed as a Mystery / Horror game - and the mere fact that it is has that "Horror" classification does imply that there is something horrific within it to be found.

 

Well...
...there is.

 

That is the extent of my spoiler.

 

I'm not going to get into the weeds, and even mention how that element is integrated, let alone WHAT it is, or when a player might discover it - except to say this: 
They are staggeringly well done.

I played Immortality with my wife by my side - we chose to "watch" (play) Immortality in lieu of watching a TV show or film for the few nights we took to complete it - and the process of playing the game, discovering "the thing" investigating it, discussing it, and playing detective with the footage was an experience genuinely quite unlike any other game.

When first discovering the more hidden stuff - "the thing" as I shall refer to it, we found it deeply unnerving and creepy - in a way very few horror games are able to muster - and even beyond that, once the veil was lifted, the simple process of dissecting that mystery remained profoundly chilling and unsettling - in the best possible way. 
Indeed - upon finishing, MsBloodmoney - who is not a huge gamer, but is an ardent and inveterate horror-phile, and considers horror her favourite genre of cinema - declared Immortality, a videogame, to be one of the best horror films she has seen in a long while. 

 

Now, I hear you ask... 
..."hey... how you going to talk about a game, without talking about the main part of the game then?"

 

Well, the fact is, luckily, Immortality is a game that, even without "that thing"... is still one of the most impressive, original, intriguing and audacious games to have come out in the past decade. 
There is plenty to talk about, even while not talking about what I wont talk about!

In terms of actual mechanical gameplay, Immortality is relatively slight - even as compared to something like Barlow's previous FMV game, Telling Lies.

The way that footage is discovered and viewed is by way of "connecting elements". The player starts out with only a single piece of footage, and has the ability to rewind it, speed it up, freeze-frame or go frame-by-frame through stills, using the analogue stick as a defacto "reel control", and a single button to activate an "analysis mode" where a controllable cursor appears on screen.
By clicking on elements within the frame at different points - say, for example, an ashtray - the player will be presented with a moment in another piece of footage that contains the same, or a similar ashtray. They jump to that moment in that new piece of footage, and can watch from that point, or rewind it to the beginning, watch from the start, and then can click on another element within that footage, to jump to another.
And so on, and so on.

 

That is, for the most part, it. 
From a mechanical standpoint, at least.

"Backing up" will give the player an overview - a simple screen showing every piece of footage discovered, which can be ordered either by chronological date of shooting, or chronological date by reel - and they can also flag specific clips with a rudimentary "favourite" system... but realistically, that is all the player will be doing - at least, via a controller - through the whole game.

 

As said, even as compared to Telling Lies, that is pretty simple. In Telling Lies, for example, footage was found by searching keywords from dialogue, and presented in limited "batches" resulting in a slightly more "gamified" experience, and it also had the more traditional "wrap-around" element, with the player playing a specific character, and therefore having a more defined "player character goal". 
Here, however, both those things are absent - for the better.

 

The searching for elements within the footage, and therefore jumping from one to the other makes for a much more fluid, dynamic way of playing...
...and the lack of a "player character" is of significant note, because by removing that element, the room for the horror aspects is made. 
Rather than playing as a character, we are playing as ourselves. 
We aren't playing a character tasked with archiving the footage - we are the ones tasked with archiving the footage, so when things get creepy and unnerving, it's because they are happening before our eyes... and to us.

That notion, of involving the player directly, is played into throughout the game -explicitly in some instances involving the more supernatural elements - but broadly even outside of it. 
Because the footage often shows film scenes being filmed, but includes the footage captured before the director called "action" and beyond the director calling "cut", there are a lot of instances where the actors will break character, and look directly at the camera, giving away some of their emotionality, is if looking at the director. 
Since we are behind the camera though, the effect is that the actors appear to be looking and emoting directly to us - the player - and that effect can be extremely unnerving in some moments, or spark a real feeling of empathy and connection at others. 

These are real-life actors, playing live-action characters, and by looking directly at us in their more "unguarded" moments, the natural human feelings of connection and empathy kick in. It's easy, when watching a character, to feel detached and "once-removed" from them and their plight...
...but when the actor playing that character breaks character, and smiles, or looks sad, of forlorn, or upset, or scared - and does it directly to us, the fact that they are, themselves, a character, becomes largely immaterial - once we have bought into the fiction that we are, ourselves, the archivist, those "actor" characters are now "real people" - the people behind the characters, and feel on the same level as us. 

 

I'd wager it virtually impossible to finish playing Immortality, and not feel some strange connection to to some of the actors - and especially to Marissa Marcel... because it feels as if SHE is real, and the characters she plays are fake. 
She is a magnetic, intoxicating character - within the fiction, she has an effect on all the people around her - and we become no different. She has the same effect on the player, because they themselves have bough into that world.

 

The game does flourishes to make us feel like a character in the story too, like, for example, kicking in the score more dramatically when the player is scrubbing through a lot of footage at speed - making even those moments of furiously trying to find a specific remembered element feel cinematic...
... as the game mirrors such a scene in a movie. The character, shown in "montage", searching, then discovering something important.

Immortality is a game where, as said, the mechanical gameplay is very slight, but the engagement is off the charts - and that, of course, is completely dependent on three things:

the acting, the writing, and the general filmmaking.

 

All three are absolutely phenomenal.

The tough thing with talking about the acting on show in Immortality in a game review, is that there really isn't a counterpoint within the genre in which it lives.
It really isn't comparable to acting in other gaming media. 

There are, of course, games with motion-captured acting that is stellar (The Last of Us games, for example,) or games that have some acting (live-action or motion-captured) that approaches Immortality - Alan Wake 2 is good, recent example - but I'd argue none of those examples are asking the same level of naturally or range from the actors involved, nor have even close to the amount, or variety, of material.

While there is real-life, on screen acting in plenty of FMV games, there really isn't a reasonable comparison there either, because very few other FMV games even approach the amount of material, nor the quality on show in Immortality.  Literally the only games I can think of where the comparison isn't a virtual joke is the other two Sam Barlow games - Her Story, and Telling Lies, both of which had very good acting on show - but even those pale in comparison to Immortality. Partly because those games simply don't have the sheer volume of material that Immortality does, nor the scope...
...but mainly because while those games are well acted (and they are,) the actors are generally having to play a single character, and not having to contend with the myriad different genres, characters, on-screen/off-screen dynamics, and sheer range required.

Pretty much every actor in Immortality is having to play multiple and varied roles that are deep and nuanced - playing both an "on-screen" character in the particular film they are associated with, and the "real-life" counterpart - the actor they are playing who is playing that character - and are having to break between those two at specific points, or with different supernatural aspects affecting them...
...and having to do so with a subtlety and attention to nuance and detail that allows for the player to pick up on multiple subtle things, without simply "giving the game away".
No element in the game - no turn, or hint, or curiosity can ever be utterly unique - there cannot be only a single instance where a player might notice something, as that would potentially ruin the game if missed - but they also cannot hang lantern on any specific thing at any specific time, and call too much attention to it, or the game wouldn't work as the mystery it is. 

All film scenes must look like they were genuine scenes being filmed, in a film that would have made sense as its own fiction... 
...but must also work when the director cuts, and the actors behave as they should, or would, given what is going on off-screen, at that particular time. 

Virtually every actor in the entirety of the production does a fantastic job with their parts, but without a doubt, the most impressive part is that played by Manon Gage as Marissa Marcel herself. 

 

Gage is tasked with playing a role that is complicated, nuanced, and seen in three different era's. She is seen both behind the scenes and in front of the camera, in candid moments, as a young, naive actress, a temptress, an auteur, a party girl, a starlet, an interviewee and interviewer...
...and playing 4 separate character roles in three different productions of differing genres and eras and filmic styles, variously breaking character, shaping characters, playing off different actors who themselves are either playing character or not...
...and has to carry the considerable task of playing into the more supernatural elements of the narrative, which, of course, she is inextricably wrapped up in.

 

She is an actor who is able to take a scene in which the tone is one where she appears to be being rather explicitly and degradingly exploited, then turn the whole tone on its head with a single look or subtle intonation, flipping it so she becomes the exploiter rather than the exploited. 

 

Scenes where the actor is in conflict with the character she plays, or who's relationship with another actor has changed but the relationship between the characters they are playing on screen has not, for example, require a specificity and nuance that must be subtle enough to seem realistic to the fiction, but still able to be interpreted and pick up on by the player. 

That is far and away above what is generally asked in this kind of performance, and time and again, it is not only achieved, but achieved with the kind of quality that stands up to the rigorous and repeated analysis that Immortality requires from a game point-of-view.

It is an absolute tour-de-force performance - one essentially capturing every facet, age, mood, emotion and the full spectrum of experience of a single character (who herself, plays characters, both on screen and off), and one the entire game is completely dependent on to work. It is the kind of role that - if on film or television - would be in contention in award seasons (and, in fact, Gage has won several awards for this performance, albeit as they relate to games, rather than film.) 

It really is difficult to properly articulate just how crucial this performance is to the game, and how well Gage stepped up to it. 

Immortality is a game that, if not as well written and acted as it is, would be something of a minor curiosity - one of a few games doing something interesting in the much maligned FMV game space, and noteworthy only in that respect...
...but the level of commitment, the writing, the quality of filming - and most importantly, the acting - elevates it to the point that Immortality isn't simply "a good FMV game" - it is probably the best FMV game, and the greatest argument the genre has ever had, for viability and legitimacy to a "non-gaming" crowd.

In virtually all FMV games, acting is measured relative to the unspoken statement "for an FMV game." 
In Immortality, the acting is not only measured without that caveat - it comes out well without that caveat. 
The performance would still come out better than a significant amount of filmic and televisual output, whether part of a game or not.

The writing and filming are the other aspects - and both excellent throughout too.

 

Immortality is covering a fairly grand scope - both in terms of depth of character, and breadth of time, and makes that clear and well realised in every frame.

All three of the "lost" films are genre pieces of their own distinct genres and eras.

 

The earliest - "Ambrosio" is an erotic religious drama from the 60s, of the type made by the studio system - complete with a Dino DeLaurentis-type old-school, visionary-if-somewhat-lecherous director, and the filmic style is pitched pretty much perfectly to mirror the grander, more salacious religious films of the age - think Caligula, Salo, Mother Joan of the Angels etc.
Everything from the film stock, to the sets dressing, to the manner of rehearsal and casting and speech patterns (on film, and behind the scenes) feels pitch perfect.

 

The second film - "Minsky" - apparently made shortly thereafter - is more in the European auteur style that was imported to America as something of a reaction to those grander films, and as a rejection of the old studio system - with Marissa and her director putting it together in a more art-house style.  It is a neo-noir detective story, in the style of something like Klute - and again, every part of what the film itself looks like, it's shot composition and framing, its style and the dressing around it - the sexual-revolution era extras, the partying, the sexual freedom and discussions about that sexual freedom in the unguarded moments, the outfits, the haircuts - it all feels congruous with that era.

Seeing footage from the game, alongside behind the scenes footage of other early 70s auteur cinema, it would be hard to distinguish between the real and the constructed.

 

The third film - "Two of Everything" - is a much later production, from the early 90s - and is a class-based, erotic noire mystery, of the type that existed then too - in the vein of films like Basic Instinct, Colour of Night, and other slightly-schlocky, absurd-premise-but-with-dark-erotic-themes type movies. Once again, it feels appropriate to the era. The way rehearsals are done, the way cuts are done - even things like how the production workers interact with the stars, or how shots are set up and footage captured feels different to the other films in the right ways, and befitting the era it is aping.

 

It's remarkable how, for example, the player is able to discern exactly which film a shot is from, before even seeing a single actor or explicit clue, simply by looking at the film stock being used, or the signature lighting effects of that particular genre and era, or the filmic style of the time and genre.
In fact, while it is not the primary focus of the game, there is a tremendous through-line on show within Immortality, of the evolution of Hollywood, and film itself. The player can not only see how film and film making evolved and changed over the 3 decades shown, but also what stayed the same and remained. 
There are certain tropes that permeate all three films that are brought starkly into focus when viewing all eras mixed together like this - and when clicking on, say, a kiss, or an exposed breast, or a tear, and flipping from one era to the other, the player is given a pretty interesting view of how specific filmic tropes and ideas are constantly evolving, while still staying the same at their fundamental core. 

The actual tasks of pulling all the together into a game that works, is something quite special.
I can only imagine the difficulties involved in writing a gamer like Immortality - where every player will be discovering the game in completely different orders, and where mysteries must be compounded and evolving at their pace, without anyone stumbling into the end game too quickly, but neither being bored or put off or simply stuck in a loop of previously watched footage...
...but all I can speak to is my own experience, which seemed both completely led by my own curiosity and whim, yet felt entirely filmic and oddly well structured. 
As if I, somehow, stumbled into playing it in the exact "right" order.
That is - I am fully aware - not possible.
It is literally impossible, not only, that I somehow stumbled ass-backwards into the one "correct" route, and that all others are wrong...
...but it is a remarkable testament to the game design, that virtually any path a person could take seems to feel like "the way they should have done it" all along.

It might seem, to the person reading this write up who has not played the game, like Immortality as a game would naturally be lacking in any kind of "finale". 
After all, the game is driven primarily by what the player knows, and comes to understand, and is therefore partly down to "you get out what you take away". Certainly, that was the case with Barlow's previous two experimental FMV games. Her Story in particular had really no natural "end" - it was simply over when the player felt they had got enough from it, and while Telling Lies did have a defined "end game" it was triggered essentially by seeing X% of the footage.

 

In Immortality's case though, due to the nature of the more supernatural elements in the game, there is actually a far more structurally satisfying "End". 
There is a thing that happens - not after seeing everything, but after seeing particular key elements, combined with an overall percentage (I think!) - that results in one of the most wild, well played, and deeply unnerving endings I've seen in a game.

It is not an "absolute" end in the basic sense - certainly the player can continue beyond that point (and I did) to work to solve many more of the other mini (and not so mini) mysteries around the footage - and simply to see more of it, as I think it would be borderline criminal to miss a single clip of the game, as absurdly well make as it is - but what it does offer is what Telling Lies and Her Story never managed: A really good, climactic, structured "finale" in a game that is almost tailor-made not to allow for one.

It's a really clever, interesting way to approach such a game, and works very well. 

 

If there is one element of the game I slightly lament, it's that I feel like that finale possibly triggers a little earlier than I would have liked it to - I still had quite a few mysteries I wanted to solve, and questions I wanted to find answers to when it happened...
...but it's not something I'd hold too hard against the game.
Partly, because one can simply continue afterwards, but mostly, because coming when it does (around the 5-6 hour mark) does arguably cap the game at a reasonable point for those not struck by the full "completionism" sickness - when they have come to understand the depth of the mystery, if not every minute intricacy of it.

Overall, Immortality is something very, very special - in both the FMV field, and the horror field.

 

It is a game that feels truly original, whip-smart, is better acted and written than the majority of Film and TV, let alone other games...
... and manages to be deeply unsettling and genuinely unnerving in a way that most full-blown, "game-y" horror games could ever hope to come close to.

 

The limited mechanical gameplay does place it in an odd category - it feels more "film" than "game" at any particular point of play...
...but that doesn't change the fact that it is a story and a pice of fiction that simply couldn't exist as anything other than a game - and makes use of the interactivity that being a game brings with it in such novel ways, that it feels like its own thing entirely.

 

Immortality is a film that can only work as a game, and a game that can only work as a film...
...and by expanding the FMV genre to such a level that Barlow has essentially created a new genre all to himself, he has managed to craft literally the only home that could work for Immortality - without a doubt, his magnum opus.

 

It is - and I don't use this term often - a genuine masterpiece.
 

 

 

 

The Ranking:

 

So.... ranking Immortality was a dang nightmare!

 

The issue is, realistically, there is only one truly comparable game on the list: Telling Lies. 
It is, after all, the only other game from Sam Barlow, which is also an FMV game on the level and of the style he defacto created...
...however, it's not a particularly useful comparison, because Immortality is so good, and operating on such an elevated level to Telling Lies, that the comparison is almost moot.

In fact, the existence of Immortality almost makes Telling Lies seem worse. Telling Lies is not a bad game at all - it's a very good one - but there is a bit of a "The Hobbit" to "The Lord of the Rings" quality to the two games - the former was great, but once the latter came out, the former looked simplistic and small in its shadow!

Instead, I had a think about just how impactful, and splendid an experience Immortality was, and then consider:
"What are the highest ranked games on the list, that hold those high placements for reasons that are NOT related to their mechanical gameplay?"

 

Now, that isn't as easy as you think.

There are games up there where the gameplay is fine, but isn't what pushes them as high as they are, (I would argue, for example, Bioshock, in terms of pure, raw, technical gameplay, would not hold its place where it does - it is the art design, mood, atmosphere and narrative that elevate it,) - however, it does still have quite a lot OF mechanical gameplay, and it is not a negative.

What I needed, was games where the technical, mechanical gameplay is either very slight, or not at all the reason for the games esteem...
...and the two that stood out, were This War of Mine, and Norco.

 

Now, Norco is a point and click Adventure game, which is a genre that is "gameplay-slight" anyways - but even within that genre, Norco's controls can be ropey. It is- at best - serviceable on that front...
...but what elevates it is everything else. The writing, the art, the tone, the score, the feeling, the mood, the weirdness and the style.

 

As compared to Norco, I actually think Immortality does have the edge on mechanics - it does even less, but does it with a bit more fluid style, and with some more clever mechanical hooks. (I know, I didn't mention those - it's for the initially mentioned reason about "The Thing" which I won't mention!)

Norco is one of the best examples of writing I've seen in a game, and as a straight narrative, I would contend it still (just) beats Immortality...
...but Immortality gets close, and does it while being malleable and changeable - fitting to the player whim to an extent that Norco's doesn't. While Norco makes for a brilliant, bizarre, strange tone, I think Immortality meets it head on in that fight.
I think Norco takes the win on music, but Immortality takes it on pure, unadulterated emotional investment (again, it's close, but it does), and Immortality also has the benefit of being not just original within a genre, as Norco is - but wholly original, in the sense that, aside from the two Barlow games leading to it, it effectively exists within its own genre. 

I think it's well known in this checklist how much I love Norco, so when I say Immortality beats it, I don't say it lightly...
...but I think it does.

The other game was This War of Mine - and that's a curious one, because it does have the gameplay - albeit not exemplary gameplay in its strategy field - but is really deserving of its place because of the tone, the malleability, the human connection...
...all things Immortality has too.
It doesn't have a straight narrative per-se, but it does have player-driven, emergent stories, whereas Immortality has one, grand story, being viewed in myriad, malleable ways. 

I find the hear-breaking elements of each playthrough of This War of Mine very effective - and amazingly empathy-inducing, considering the style of gameplay - but I think Immortality is doing that "connection to characters" better than virtually any game I have ever played... so it has to win there.

I could go round and round on this, as the two are quite distinct and original in their own ways, but in the end, I think I had to fundamentally take it down to the core, and ask "which of there two games, gun-to-my-head, would I recommend ahead of the other"...
... I can't deny that it would be Immortality.

The game directly above This War of Mine though - that couldn't possibly be less comparable to Immortality: it's Tetris effect...
... probably the most "gameplay-first" game there ever has been!

 

That's a really tough one, but fundamentally, I do think Immortality reaches its peak with that fight. 
The thing with Immortality, is that while it is one of the best experiences I've had in a game for a while - it is largely a one-time experience. It would be impossible to replay Immortality and have the same experience again. Watching someone else pay might still be fun...
...but going against a game like Tetris Effect, which I still play daily, after years of playing it, and some of the games above it, which are also very impactful games, but ones that do have more mechanical gameplay backing them up, and can stand up to repeat plays in a way Immortality can't, means I am comfortable seeing Immortality find its ranking peak.

 

Immortality a heck of a game, and is, therefore, the first in a while to enter the Scientific Top 20...
...and well deserves it!
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So there we have it folks!

 

 

 Hitman 3 remains as 'Current Most Awesome Game'!

htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diaries finally remains as the worst-of-the-worst, with the title of 'Least Awesome Game'!

 

 

What games will be coming along next time to challenge for the top spot... or the bottom rung?

That's up to randomness, me.... and YOU!

 

 

 

Remember:

 

SPECIAL NOTE

 

If there are any specific games anyone wants to see get ranked sooner rather than later - drop a message, and I'll mark them for 'Priority Ranking'! 

 

The only stipulation is that they must be on my profile, at 100% (S-Rank)....

 and aren't already on the Rankings! 

[grayhammmer]

I saw that Immortality entered your top 20 and then saw that you are refusing to spoil it during your review, and so to avoid having any expectations when I get around to playing it I'm going to stay away from actually reading your review so I can go in completely fresh (I have a big problem with spoiling things I play/watch because I want to see what others think about it before I even finish it and I'm trying really hard to fix this problem of mine).

 

Also, now that you're caught up, I would like to request a analysis on Another World, a game that I myself have played long after it came out and as such was more disappointed in the length of the game than I probably would have been if I played it back when it came out (if that makes sense).

[Platinum_Vice]

On 2/22/2024 at 11:55 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

Immortality a heck of a game, and is, therefore, the first in a while to enter the Scientific Top 20...

 

Dang! Hot diggity. 

 

On 2/22/2024 at 11:55 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

These are real-life actors, playing live-action characters, and by looking directly at us in their more "unguarded" moments, the natural human feelings of connection and empathy kick in. It's easy, when watching a character, to feel detached and "once-removed" from them and their plight...
...but when the actor playing that character breaks character, and smiles, or looks sad, of forlorn, or upset, or scared - and does it directly to us, the fact that they are, themselves, a character, becomes largely immaterial - once we have bought into the fiction that we are, ourselves, the archivist, those "actor" characters are now "real people" - the people behind the characters, and feel on the same level as us.

 

This reminds me of Inscryption. I got so bought into the "game within the game" when my character played Lemmy's adventure, that when that game within the game was interrupted or when I would lose, then camera would tilt upwards and I'd move my character as if I was moving myself. Feels kind of like a brainhack or hypnosis, somehow.